Personal thoughts on “COVID-19 reinfection” and CDC’s claims that patients are not infectious and have recovered 10 days after their symptoms disappear even if they may test positive in RT-PCR:
It is well-established in many studies that even recovered patients can test positive in RT-PCR and yet are not infectious [1]. Recovered patients can test positive in RT-PCR because RT-PCR only tells you that fragments of the virus are present. This has led the CDC to publish guidelines on discharging patients 10 days after symptoms have resolved [1].
It is also well-established that T-Cell responses are robust [2], but antibodies from B-Cells do not last for a long time [3]. Still, we’re still confident that T-Cell responses can kill the virus and prevent reinfection.
Now, let’s imagine a certain Patient X. Patient X got infected and recovered. Patient X tests positive in RT-PCR via nasopharyngeal swab, but we know that these are just the fragments of the virus. We know that the patient is not infectious.
Now, let’s say this Patient is not able to maintain his B-Cell and T-Cell response for a sufficiently long time. Cytotoxic T-cells did not kill the rogue cells infected by the virus. Antibodies from B-Cells declined as time passes by. Patient still follows social distancing, hand hygiene, use of face masks and shields.
A virus is not a living thing, so you can’t kill it. In Chinese, the word “virus” is translated as “sickness toxin” (病毒). Normal poisonous chemicals don’t replicate, but viruses do.
So if we understand virus as a “toxin” – dual nature of a virus as a “toxin” and a “pathogen”, then naturally, even residual doses of it can cause sickness. By residual doses, we’re not talking about the non-infectious fragments of a virus, but the virus as a whole, or its virulence / pathogenic factors. This can explain why many viral diseases like Measles, Ebola, Varicella, HIV, HPV, HSV have post-infectious latent periods and post-infectious complications (meaning, even if they aren’t “infected”, they still manifest the disease or its sequelae).
If getting “infected” means it’s from a “living pathogen”, and “recovered” means recovering because the “pathogen is dead”, then a person cannot be “infected” with nor “recovered” from a virus. Viruses are in a limbo; they are neither “alive” nor “dead” because they are not composed of cells; they are not “living”. Like what my classmate said, they are “necromancers or dark wizards of life itself” [4]. They cause mutations in the DNA that cause cancer and drive evolution.
Given this, it is very well possible that people get reinfected – just not in the way one might understand. This is consistent with sporadic news reports. We might have to think of “reinfection” as the inability to expel an “alive”, but non-living, “sickness toxin” from the body.
(Note that I currently don’t have any hard evidence to support my claims.)
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/…/disposition-hospitalized-patients.html
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z
[3] https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/932671
[4] Jibreel Fernandez, my classmate
Incognito 